


A Bad Day

by Zab43



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Comfort, Death of Imps, Established Relationship, Friendship, Frustration, Heaven, Hell, Hell-Fire, Ineffable Bureaucracy, Multi, Self-Harm, Stress Relief, Supportive Partners, flies, stress at work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zab43/pseuds/Zab43
Summary: Hell wasn't a good place to work, which was hardly surprising when you think about it. However, even in Hell, some days were worse than others. Today was an especially bad day.How do the demons cope with a bad day in Hell?
Relationships: Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens), Dagon/Uriel (Good Omens), Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	A Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> Sat in the office a couple of days ago, stressed to Hell(!), and this idea jumped into my head.

Hell wasn't a good place to work, which was hardly surprising when you think about it. However, even in Hell, some days were worse than others. Today was an especially bad day.

Dagon scowled at Hastur's report. The first thing that had irritated her was the fact he'd used three different colours of ink. One of them was green. Dagon was sure she'd read somewhere that only psychopaths used green ink. While it would be tempting to say Hastur was a psychopath (his abundant atrocities and utter lack of sympathy for his victims worked in favour of that diagnosis) his own turbulent emotions, paranoid instability and failure to display even a modicum of charm or charisma (in Dagon's opinion) showed he wasn't. Therefore, the only possible reason for the green ink was a deliberate attempt to annoy her personally.

The second annoying thing was the state in which it had been delivered. Stained and crumpled, inexpertly smoothed back out then folded again un-symmetrically and very damp. Then came the fact it was late too. The final straw was the near illegible handwriting. While beautiful from a distance, the neatly sloped, curly, copperplate was incredibly difficult to decipher close to.

She scrawled angry red symbols over the green, black and blue ink splats. At one point accidentally inscribing the ancient rune for fire and scorching the already disastrous mess. She was not in a good mood.

Meanwhile, across the dank hall and down several long dark corridors, Hastur himself had also had a bad day. The nib of his favourite quill had cracked blotching ink splots all over his report. The 'borrowed' replacement quill seemed to have carried some sort of curse, the blue ink transforming into a sludgy green after only a few lines. The Erics had, in fact, cursed all of their pens in a vain attempt to prevent their constant theft.

He gazed forlornly at the smudged page with its multicoloured ink. Dagon would hate it. She always saw messy reports as some sort of personal insult. Bloody paranoid fish! Just when he could do with getting out of the worst of her bad books too (Dagon had several grades of books and the very best a demon could hope for was merely being in her 'bad book'). He screwed the sheets up and threw them into the corner where they landed with a soft splash.

At this point came the sound of something coughing apologetically. Well, as apologetic as a cough could get. Hastur spun round, teeth bared and knife in hand. It was only an imp. He stood down, feeling silly for being caught in a mild panic by an imp. This, coming on top of the disaster of the messy report, made him very angry.

"Your Disgrace, may I offer my insincerest disrespects and remind you that Dagon needs your report by 5pm sharp".

The imp disappeared in a jet of hell-fire as Hastur lost his temper. After this excess he took a deep breath and weighed up which Dagon would be most offended by: a scruffy messy report handed in on time or a neat tidy one several hours late. He decided being on time but messy was the least worst option. Sighing he picked up the damp, creased and multi-inked report off the floor and attempted to smooth it out before hastily folding it roughly and looking round for the messenger imp. At this point he remembered he'd incinerated him and stormed out to look for a replacement.

It took hours to find one, by which time the report was both late and messy - the most worst option. Hastur's mood got worse. That wasn't even the end of it. As soon as he sat back at his desk the overhead pipe disgorged a steady stream of disgusting brown liquid onto him. Jumping back his chair tipped him neatly backwards onto the floor, soaking his coat and painfully jarring his spine. Back on his feet he grabbed the nearest bucket slamming it onto the desk under the leak. He picked up the phone and dialled maintenance for the third time that day.

Beelzebub was also having a less than enjoyable time. A quivering imp was cringing before her trying to explain why, yet again, they were short on messengers. It really wasn't his fault. Hastur wasn't the only demon to take his frustrations out on the imps and they simply couldn't multiply fast enough to keep up with demand. Not that this mattered to Beelzebub. She was just angry that, yet again, she had been kept waiting.

In Hell they didn't shoot the messenger, no they did something much, much worse. Before he could run away the imp was surrounded by a swarm of flies. They entered through his nose, mouth and ears, eating away like a plague of locusts. When they retreated all that remained was a sash and a clipboard. The knowledge that eating the messenger had only worsened the imp shortage made her even more angry.

Crowley's latest orders were now delayed yet again. The thought of him sitting around on earth enjoying himself while his workload was caught up in the imps' backlog was almost too much. Beelzebub threw herself back onto her throne in a temper, whacking her head on one of the decorative protruding bones. That just about topped it off. She stormed out of the throne room, her halo of flies buzzing angrily.

Dagon had also had enough. Failing to find a messenger imp to return the report to Hastur she shoved it into the hands of one of the Erics snarling at him to deliver it or die painfully. She stormed off towards the front entrance, texting furiously as she went.

By this point Hastur was yelling down the phone. The wail of bagpipes blasted out hold music for the maintenance department. Initially it was merely intensely annoying, after twenty minutes it made him feel like someone was boring holes into his brain. Another forty minutes in and it felt like they were pouring molten lead into the holes.

Finally the line clicked and a gruff voice barked out "maintenance, hold please", at which point the line clicked again and then went completely dead. Hastur screamed, throwing the phone across the room and biting down hard on his finger in an attempt to stifle the noise.

Gabriel was bored. His large desk held a square pot of different coloured pens, neatly aligned with this was a pristine notebook and an untouched keyboard. A large flat screen monitor displayed an empty email inbox. Heaven was just too efficient. He had nothing to do.

Sighing heavily he tipped the pens out onto the desk and began arranging them in a line in order of the colours of the rainbow. He had just got to the tricky matter of deciding exactly what the difference between dark blue and indigo was when his door flew open.

Stood before the Archangel's huge desk was a small Prince of Hell, surrounded by a buzzing swarm of angry flies, her face covered in angry looking boils that still failed to look as angry as her scowl. Gabriel was startled, then he smiled. "Come here my little dipteran". At the familiar pet name a half smile pulled at the corner of the angry demon's mouth.

Gabriel jumped up, shooing her towards his large director's chair. Beelzebub gratefully jumped up onto the soft padded leather, sighing happily at Gabriel tilted the chair back so she could look into his violet eyes. "Bad day?" He asked, like he was genuinely interested in her administrative woes. She drew in a breath relishing the scent of lavender and freshly laundered cotton, so different from Hell's noisome vapours.

Gabriel leaned down, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Tell me all about it" he invited. The torrent of complaints started and, with each syllable, Beelzebub could feel the tension flowing out of her. Above her the Archangel made sympathetic noises, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder as he listened intently.

Uriel wasn't entirely surprised by the text from Hell. She knew month-ends were a particularly fraught time for them. That this month end was also the end of the quarter, and on a Friday too, would only have made it worse.

Truth be told Uriel was pleased to get the text. Her own neat filing cabinets were full of tidily typed reports in clean white binders. There wasn't a single sheet out of place, not so much as one typo needing correction. No angels to berate, nothing to complain about, no reports to chase up.

Outside her office the monotonous noise of celestial hymns created an irritatingly calming background hum. Her comfortable chair spun round in circles without so much as a squeak. The cup of coffee on her desk maintained exactly the right temperature no matter how long she left it. Everything was so perfect, nothing to get annoyed by, nothing to complain about.

On receipt of the text she jumped up gleefully, slamming the door behind her and heading down to earth. It took a couple of times walking up and down the unpromising looking alley before she spotted the door. Unmarked beyond a single discreet rune in a slightly sinister looking reddish brown. Uriel wrinkled her nose. Human blood by the smell of it. This was the place.

Down a precipitous staircase coated in something dark and slightly sticky and she found the bar. Dagon was waiting at a table near the back, two large glasses and a jug of bright blue liquid in front of her.

The Archangel took one look at the demon's face and asked "what's the slimy toad done this time?" Dagon grinned widely showing off her razor sharp teeth. "How'd you guess it was him again?" Uriel smiled back, her golden spots glinting in the sinister red lights "who else could rile you up so much? Tell me what he did this time Dâg, not set more imps on fire has he?"

Uriel filled both their glasses and took a long sip of the Blue Lagoon, coughing slightly at the quantity of vodka in it. Dagon hissed out her latest grievances. "Green ink??!" Cried the Archangel "only psychopaths use green ink surely?" Uriel grinned happily as her companion cackled at her words. "Exactly what I thought!" She agreed.

Down in Hell Ligur opened the door to Hastur's office. It appeared to be empty. However, he could hear a noise from somewhere behind the desk. Going in to investigate he found Hastur curled up on the floor, rocking back and forth, hand in mouth, muttering to himself.

Ligur noted his bloodstained finger and glove. On the desk he saw the smashed telephone and bucket overflowing with slop. The chair had been thrown against the wall with such force that one of the legs had broken clean off and the charred remains of an imp were evident under a half burned messenger sash and scorched clipboard.

He knelt down next to the other demon, gently prying his hand away from his mouth. "What have you done to yourself love?" He asked, gently stroking the half severed finger, healing the damage as he went.

Hastur looked up at him, eyes glassy with unshed tears, and just shook his head. Ligur pulled him into an embrace, stroking his back and making sympathetic noises. "Can't do it Lig. Can't cope with this. Wish I was dead. Wish I'd never survived the fall. I can't...." wailed Hastur, shaking in the other's arms.

Ligur shushed him, stroking gently until the pent up tears began to fall. "Let it out love, don't worry, I'm here for you". His voice was calm and quiet but authoritative and Hastur sobbed without restraint.

Eventually he calmed down enough to attempt an apology through his tears, but Ligur shushed him again. "You've done nothing wrong love, you're so strong, you do so much, just hold on to me". The tears finally stopped and Hastur smiled up at his partner. Ligur leant down kissing him gently before helping him upright.

A miracle restored the phone and chair to their former condition. Ligur then eyed the bucket warily. A still grinning Hastur picked it up without hesitation and, opening the office door, threw the contents over the first demon he saw, cackling manically. Turning back to Ligur, eyes shining, he asked hopefully "can we go set fire to something now?" Ligur nodded and took his hand.

Hell wasn't a good place to work, but everyone had their own way of dealing with it. Maybe tomorrow wouldn't be such a bad day.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/thoughts etc welcome.


End file.
